For the Archstone of the Small King, Boletarian Palace is your initial starting location. You get a fun cinematic as a giant dragon flies down.

You start out outside the castle gates. First, turn around and go "backwards" for some healing items. Now you're ready. Go slowly, so you only have to take on a few enemies at once.

If you die you reset at the beginning of the level. You *only* lose your "souls", you retain all possessions. If you make it back to your body you recover those souls. However, if you die again before you reach your corpse, that first corpse (and its souls) vanish and now it's only the "last" corpse you can go after.

There aren't things "in" crates but you might sometimes find items underneath. Move your way along the path.

You get to a wooden set of stairs and a guy trapped within a wooden area. Ignore him for now. Start your way up the stairs slowly, killing a few guys along the way. Enemies don't reset unless you die or go out of the level. In both of those cases they do fully reset (except for bosses).

When you get to the stone stairs, STOP!! A giant stone ball will come down and smash open the guy below's cage. Go get his item. Now you can go up.

You'll get to a blue eyed guy in front of a fog door. Take it easy with him, he's challenging. Make sure you circle behind him to get his weak side. He also heals so try to take him out quickly.

Once you go past him and down the stairs you get into fire bomb land. Often they'll fire bomb themselves or fall. You get to a lever at the bottom - stand behind it to open the door You find a cling ring here - you raise your HP in soul form. Very useful! This path now gets you back to the "ghostly pit" so this is a shortcut you can take going forward.

Go back up to the fog door. Face it and go the other way. You'll reach a red-eyed guy who is really evil. I would avoid him until much later. If you retreat into the room just before mister red-eyes, the screen can really suck with the roof cutting off the health bar. Wait until level 50 or so to try this one. If you're going to attempt to take him on at least lure him into the other room so you can get your corpse back

If you DO want to kill him, what we do is magic him. You hit him a few times in a row (while retreating) and then he pauses / gets knocked back and at that point your next hit really whallops him. Then you do the cycle over again.

OK. through the fog door. Head down the stairs. Along the path to the right behind a few wooden structures is a seller, to buy some supplies from. Note that once you kill the mini-boss he vanishes.

Now keep going along the path. When you come out into the open area, a few will jump down in ambush from the left. Watch out for the archers. Head up the stairs to meet up with a blue-faced enemy. There's a fog door right there. Now instead of going through the fog door go back to the open area and work your way down to the lower level skeleton guys to get some items. Bash some carts to get into an alley and another blue-eyed guy. Soon you'll find a friendly princeling who thanks you for saving him. Let him go about his merry business.

WARNING: There is sort of a "bug" situation that can happen here. The prince guy normally cannot be killed by these monsters. If you go out and in again, he is still "free" but the monsters reset. So he'll kill whatever monsters he encouters. However, it CAN happen that he can run into some powerful blue eyed guys and get slain. So it's worth it for you, once you free him, to try fairly strongly to push forward and kill the boss rather than just playing and replaying this level to gather up souls. Otherwise you risk the off chance of the prince being slain during this segment, and you having problems with your future path. If you happen to find a "masoleum key", this is a fairly clear indication that the prince is dead.

So anyway ...

Keep going down and down to get the remaining skeleton guys. Firebombs work well in here. Now return to the fog door.

You'll find a bin of balls. Hit it a few times to release them, and they will roll down over a whole series of enemies. What fun! Your path ahed goes to look at the two dragons in their "resting location". Stay away from them!! They are far too powerful for you right now.

Instead, take the path across the "bridge" to the other tower. There are a few enemies on the path - lure them away one by one so you can take them out alone. The dragon will come torment you during your first passes - but doesn't show up after the first mini-boss is dead. So time your run through here and press onwards.

Go through the arch and pull the lever - this opens the main front gate so you have access to Phalanx, the first mini-boss. At the bottom of the stairs are a pair of enemies. Keep moving forward. You'll run into some small blob creatures with shields. Get behind them to affect them. We call these mini-Phalanxes. There's another lever at the bottom and you're back out at the entrance. A giant spear is waiting for you :) You can't use it unfortunately.

Time for a boss fight! You're stuck in that room until you're victorious or dead. Really, it's not too bad. Get the enemies from behind, bash away, move back to heal up.

After you kill the Phalanx mini-boss, you get a new warp spot to instantly return to the Nexus. Hurrah! Now when you go back, the Black Maiden will have you go up and talk with the Dalai Lama, I mean the little monumental. Talk with him (he's at the very top of the stairs) and come back down. Now you can use the Maiden to raise your stats, and can talk with a few new people.